It’s Too Soon for Drought Aid, Lyng Says

Despite bleak prospects for rain any time soon, it is too early to discuss details of an income-protection plan for drought-stricken farmers, Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng said Friday after briefing President Reagan on the worsening conditions.

However, Lyng told reporters, a 1986 measure that paid $535 million to 180,000 victims of drought, floods and hailstorms might serve as the basis for legislative action this summer.

“I suspect that the Congress and the Administration will see that we need to help with money if the thing continues as bad as it’s been,” the secretary said. “Just how you do that is very complex . . . I hope we can profit by that (1986) experience and do a better job with the farmers than we did then. It was a very expensive effort, but I think it also is a good model.”

After presenting Reagan with a 21-page report, Lyng said that the President showed “a great deal of care and concern about the effects” of the drought.

‘Concern and Compassion’

“We talked about the problems in my home state and his, California,” the secretary said, “and he has a great deal of interest and concern and compassion for people” in the devastated Midwest corn belt.

Lyng said that retail food prices already appear destined to rise about 1% this year and 2% next year above the normal inflation rate because of the drought. Particularly affected will be cereals and “those things that depend heavily upon soybean oil,” he said. However, prices of poultry and livestock, particularly beef, probably will continue to drop as producers, facing shortages of forage and high feed costs, send animals to slaughter, he added.

The secretary said that overall increases in food prices would have been substantially greater if there had not been substantial stockpiles of corn and wheat from previous bumper harvests.

Lyng held out hope for saving rains: “If we should get a couple of inches of rain a week through the month of July in Midwest corn fields, we’d get a pretty good corn crop,” he said. “We conceivably could get an 80% crop, or even 85% overall.” But he conceded that “if you look at the 30-day forecast, or the 6- to 10-day forecast, the prospects are bleak.”

Standby Legislation

The secretary hinted that the Administration will seek standby income-relief legislation this month that would be triggered if the fall harvest leaves farmers with massive losses.

“To get into writing checks to farmers . . . to tide them over almost needs to await the normal harvest period,” he said. “At that time, we should be waiting there ready to help them.”

Asked about the possible size and shape of a relief package, he said: “It’s too early to get into the details of that. I think it would be premature to start putting dollars up there.”

According to the drought report, “long-term records show no drought of this intensity in the heart of the nation’s corn belt at this stage of the growing season.”

The report also described how barge traffic in the Mississippi and Ohio rivers has been severely slowed by unusually low water levels.

“The Mississippi River downstream of Cairo, Ill., has fallen to a record low for June and in some places the lowest ever recorded,” the report said.

While much of the United States is parched, weather and crop conditions in the rest of the world are generally favorable.

“Overall, foreign supplies will buffer the market impact of the drought in the United States as exporting countries will fill more of importing countries’ needs,” the report said.